Five Australian universities break global top ten

Five Australian universities break global top ten in
QS World University Rankings by Subject

London
8th May: Five of Australia’s leading universities make
the global top ten in at least one of the 30 disciplines
covered in QS World University Rankings by Subject, released
today on www.topuniversities.com.

University
of Melbourneleads the way, making the global top ten
in six subjects: education (3rd), law (5th), linguistics
(6th), psychology (7th), accounting and finance (7th) and
medicine (9th).

ANU attains top-ten rankings in politics
and international studies (6th), history (7th), geography
(8th=), linguistic ( 9th) and philosophy (10th). The
University of Queensland ranks 7th in agriculture and
forestry, 9th in both environmental sciences and psychology,
and 10th in education. The University of Sydney highest
ranking positions are in education (6th) accounting and
finance (9th) and Law 10th). Monash University makes the top
ten in education (6th) and pharmacy and pharmacology
(7th=).

Melbourne ranks top nationally in 15 subjects
while ANU ranks top in nine. University of Queensland and
University of Sydney both claim two spots and Monash
University and University of New South Wales (UNSW) are top
in one subject apiece, pharmacy and material science
respectively. A total of 35 Australian institutions make the
global top 200 in at least one discipline.

The rankings
are based on surveys of some 70,000 academics and graduate
employers, alongside research citations and a new
‘H-Index’ measuring research impact.

Over 46,000
academics identified the leading institutions for research
within their field and region of expertise, while employers
identified the institutions that have produced outstanding
graduates in a given discipline area.

“These rankings
provide the most comprehensive global comparison of
universities yet at individual subject level,” says QS
head of research Ben Sowter. “The world-class performance
of several Australian institutions reflects their
high-impact research and outstanding reputation among an
industry-leading sample of global academic experts and
graduate employers.”

Globally, Harvard University ranks
number one in 10 disciplines, ahead of MIT (7), University
of California, Berkeley (4), Oxford (4), Cambridge (3),
Imperial (1) and University of California, Davis (1).

The
rankings feature several notable performances from Asian
universities, particularly in the hotly contested areas of
science and technology.

Nine of the top 20 institutions
in civil engineering are Asian, led by Japan’s University
of Tokyo (3rd) and Kyoto University (7th). Traditionally the
two dominant forces in international rankings, the US and UK
account for just five of the top 20.

“The shift in
global economic power is transforming the international
higher education landscape, with countries such as
Australia, Japan, Hong Kong and Singapore emerging as
genuine challengers to the traditional elite,” says
Sowter. “Many institutions in Europe are struggling to
keep pace in technical disciplines, in which financial
resources are particularly crucial.”

OVERALL ANALYSIS
QS World University Rankings by Subject offer new
level of detail for students

This year’s revamped QS
World University Rankings by Subject have been expanded to
cover a record 30 disciplines, offering students the most
detailed comparison of the world’s top universities at
individual discipline level. This year our research
citations indicator has been supplemented with a new
‘H-Index’, measuring research productivity and impact.
The two measures in tandem help us to more accurately
account for both the quality and quantity of a
university’s research output in a given
field.

Competition at the topAcross the 30
disciplines the number one spots are distributed among large
US and UK institutions that operate primarily in English:
Harvard (10), MIT (7), UC Berkeley (4), Oxford (4),
Cambridge (3), Imperial College London (1) and UC Davis (1).
The 30 individual tables are not intended to combine to form
an overall ranking, and indeed there is more than one way to
interpret which university comes out on top if we attempt to
do so. While Harvard claims more top spots than any other
institution, the university that appears in the top ten in
most disciplines is University of Cambridge, with 27, ahead
of Oxford and Berkeley on 23, with Stanford (22) and Harvard
(21). Cambridge’s near-blanket presence in the top ten
indicates that, perhaps more than any other institution, it
can claim to be world-class in nearly every major area of
academic research. Yet Harvard and MIT have more departments
that are truly world’s leading.

The view from
employers While US institutions remain preeminent
for research, the rankings suggest that graduates from the
UK’s two most famous institutions are more highly regarded
than their Ivy League rivals by the world’s employers.
Employers regard Cambridge graduates as the world’s best
in 13 of the 30 subjects, while Oxford ties with Harvard on
seven, ahead of London School of Economics, University of
Tokyo and UC Davis, top in one subject each. The US/UK
monopoly extends to nearly two-thirds of the elite positions
– 397 of the 600 top-20 spots across the 30 disciplines.
Yet there is plenty of evidence in these rankings of
world-class departments outside of this traditional power
cluster.Asia excels in engineering

The
rankings feature several notable performances from Asian
universities, particularly in the hotly contested areas of
science, engineering and technology. Nine of the top 20
institutions in civil engineering are Asian, led by
Japan’s University of Tokyo (3rd) and Kyoto University
(7th), Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University (8=)
and National University of Singapore (11), alongside three
universities from Hong Kong and two from mainland China. The
US and UK account for just five of the top 20.

The pace of
change is demonstrated by the rapid development of young
Asian tech-focused institutions. Hong Kong University of
Science and Technology and Nanyang Technological University
have been in existence for just over 20 years, yet are now
established in the global top 20 in several engineering and
technical disciplines.

Mixed results for the BRIC
nations While Australia, Hong Kong, Singapore and
Japan emerge as global players in several disciplines, the
world’s major emerging economies see more mixed fortunes.

The rankings are positive for China, whose ambitious
schemes to improve higher education standards in the last 20
years have yet to see its universities break the top 20 in
the overall QS World university Rankings. Here however,
there are Chinese universities in the top 20 in ten
disciplines, with Tsinghua University ranking tenth in
materials sciences and eleventh in statistics.

Brazil’s
efforts to improve its research output have been less high
profile, yet its universities have been steadily improving
their international standing in recent years. Universidade
de Sao Paulo in particular performs well here, ranking among
the top 50 universities in the world in four disciplines.
Brazil’s total of 19 top-200 universities in at least one
of the 30 subjects compares to eight from Chile, five from
Argentina, four from Mexico and two from Colombia.

Yet
there are less encouraging signs from the remaining two BRIC
nations, India and Russia. The Indian Institutes of
Technology perform reasonably well in their specialist
areas, with the IIT Bombay, IIT Delhi and IIT Madras all
making the top 50 in at least one of the engineering
disciplines. Yet there are 11 subjects in which not a single
Indian institution makes the top 200.Russian
institutions feature in just eight of the 30 disciplines.
The best performance comes from Lomonosov Moscow State
University, which makes the top 50 in mathematics, a subject
in which Russia has historically produced numerous world
leaders.

France and Germany feel the squeeze
France and Germany have both introduced
‘excellence initiatives’ to improve the performance
of their top universities, and both can point to positive
performances in some areas. Germany has five top-50
institutions for mechanical engineering, led by
Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule Aachen [17],
and an impressive five institutions in the top 35 for
physics – only the US can claim more. France can also
point to top-20 performances from three of its universities:
Université Paris-Sorbonne (Paris IV) ranks 14th for modern
languages, Sciences Po Paris is 16th for politics and
international studies, and Université Paris 1
Panthéon-Sorbonne ranks 18th for law and 19th for history.
Yet the rankings also reveal areas in which both France and
Germany are trailing in the wake of intensified global
competition. Germany has no top-50 institutions in important
areas such as mathematics and economics, while there are no
French institutions in the top 50 in computer science or any
of the four areas of engineering: chemical, civil,
electrical and mechanical. The increased competition that is
squeezing some European institutions out of the global elite
is coming not only from Asia, but also increasingly
Australia. Australian universities make the global top 20 in
25 of the 30
disciplines.ends

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